dkSez : : : : : : Don Kahle’s blog

January has a recurring Zeitgeist, expressed every year in advertising and store promotions. You need a new storage strategy for your newly acquired stuff — containers that are color-coded, nesting, collapsible, stackable, hangable, durable, and shaped like the few remaining empty spaces in your home. “Under bed, over door, back of closet, back of drawer!” It’s repeated like a nursery rhyme for those converting a walk-in storage room out of their grown children’s nursery.

Comedian Steven Wright put it most directly: “You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?” (Americans seem determined to find out.) Or my grandmother, describing her trinket-filled home, “A place for everything and a thing for every place.”

Careful listeners will hear a second theme introduced every January. Set contrapuntally against the first, the opposing theme adds tension but also texture. Resolving the dissonance between the two themes can give a melody — or a month — special meaning.

Following December’s exaltation of excess comes January’s resolution to reduce. Athletic clubs, exercise equipment, and all things dietary — books, programs, support groups, websites, supplements.

Taken together, the post-holiday message is clear and consistent, if not exactly cheery. “We’ll make room for more of your stuff, but we’d really prefer to see less of you.”

January is no time to become a zealot for something as controversial as girth control. We’re stuck in the midst of our three chocolatest holidays. Halloween candies, edible valentines and confectionary bunnies conspire each year to widen our load.

Gluttony has always been humanity’s cold-weather hobby.

Human bodies need calories to create warmth. If calories are unavailable, converting fat is the next best option. So bulking up when temperatures go down made good sense when our brains and bodies first teamed up to preserve us.

Starvation has been so common for our species that our brains have overlearned the lesson. Our brains tell us to consume more than we need, just in case. But chasing down big game to stave starvation isn’t the same as picking up a Big Gulp to slake thirst. The drink has more calories.

Think of it this way, because your brain does. Every being inhabits four dimensions: height, width, depth and duration. Growth is survival. Given the four options, we’d prefer to live longer, extending duration. Our second choice would be to become taller.

As Register-Guard Dash columnist (and fellow Comic News alum) Leigh Anne Jasheway once said, “I’m not overweight. I’m underheight.”

Our brain wants confirmation that it’s doing a good job. The quicker the confirmation comes, the better the brain likes it. Growth is survival. Adding height stops after puberty and longevity can’t be directly confirmed, so what’s left? Width and depth.

University of Oregon strength and conditioning trainer extraordinaire Jim Radcliffe teaches athletes to visualize, using the brain’s power to imagine. Harness that, and you can fuel a body’s metabolic change. If you’ve ever watched a marathon and cheered a runner, you were doing the same thing. The runner’s brain weighs its bodily options — burn more fuel or shut down the whole operation. Your cheering “fed” the runner’s brain, which then fueled the runner’s body.

The ads for health clubs do the same, hoping you’ll project a “future you” to shape your decisions today.

Growth and survival are no longer synonymous in an affluent society. The culture of overconsumption shortens life spans, even though the brain’s motivation is just the opposite. To reduce your weight, your brain will have to learn a new trick. That’s difficult and frustrating.

Years ago, we saved pink cotton balls for that first granddaughter’s Easter surprise. We know they’re in one of those boxes in the spare bedroom, but we can’t find them. We rummage around, but quickly give up. It’s easier to just go to the store and buy more. We only need half of the package we buy, so we put the rest in a box that gets stacked in the room. If only our storage boxes were color-coded….

Storing fat has been biologically rewarded for millions of years. It’s only been in the last few decades that we ran out of places to put it.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs

A special year-end fifth Friday footnotes, follow-ups and far-flung fripperies:

• Analysts wonder why violent crime rates continue at record lows, despite the sour economy and high unemployment. Until the bad guys develop a pocket-sized device to jam our cell phone signal, we’re safer on streets than we have been in decades. It’s a new weapon in the pockets of potential victims, but also among potential passersby. “Grab a purse in an instant, star on Youtube in the next.”

• I don’t miss bowling, but I do miss being on a bowling team.

• Our Thanksgiving-Christmas feasting traditions have somehow held their own with surprisingly little reliance on cheese.

• Given Americans’ demonstrated love of mixing holidays with tangentially related sportscasting, it’s a wonder that ESPN hasn’t declared the day after Christmas as Boxing Day.

• I’ve noticed that tea-drinking countries almost always are slower-paced and focused inward. As a nation steps into the world economic maelstrom, its people switch to coffee. Or is that reversing cause and effect?

• If you don’t push on it, a lever is nothing but a stick.

• Our smart phones have ushered in a new age. But forget to dial “1” first and the recorded voice will sound like June scolding the Beaver in 1959. Doesn’t that voice know that she’s not our only Ma anymore?

• You can take the pizzeria out of Chicago, but you can’t take the pizza out of the Chicagoan.

• Each time I return from the other side of the planet, I’m sad to report that roughly half the first questions people ask concern jet lag.

• I had my colonoscopy last month (just after returning from one of those long trips.) Half the questions I heard afterwards focused on the required fast. I’ve just allowed a team of people to insert a camera as deeply inside me as it’ll go and people ask me if I want a sandwich.

• The new Thai bistro in south Eugene discounts its menu every weekday between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. That’s off-peak discounting is common in London. Watch for it to become more popular here.

• There are deodorant people and anti-perspirant people. Once you’ve chosen, it’s hard to change.

• New Zealand may have found the next gourmet comfort food craze, after donuts and cupcakes. Popsicles.

• Australians hardly ever cuss. Not even at sporting events.

• Australia and New Zealand don’t promote tipping. Unlike America, their forefathers didn’t import that vestige of aristocracy.

• The other day, I tried to touch my horn for a quick alert, when a driver ahead of me didn’t see the light had changed. But I lacked the fine motor skill and held the horn just a moment too long, sounding angry. (If that was you, accept my apology.) Now that we’ve got cars that show us maps and find us music and warm our coffee, could we please have a “light beep” button beside our regular horn?

• We should do less multi-tasking and more multi-asking. Is it necessary? Must it be done immediately? Is beginning more important right now than completing? Managing tasks is easier for many of us than managing loss — and every completion constitutes a loss.

• I suspect people who love to type “LOL” don’t laugh out loud very much.

• Spending many hours watching film could be the only shared habit of football players and their fans.

• I never feel older than when I’m struggling to remember one of my online passwords.

• Procter & Gamble is abandoning the middle, segmenting its product lines into “economical” and “expressive.” It seems the fabled Invisible Hand of the market is dividing us into haves and have-nots. Or, in this case, the Invisible Hand’s lotion.

• I almost don’t want to jinx it, but I think most of us are over having vanity ring tones on our phones.

• “Jinx” would be a great word when playing Hangman, almost better than “rhythm.”

• A man with an earring and a hearing aid on the same ear — get used to it.

• I don’t understand why the largest word on No Trespassing signs is often “POSTED.”

• “Howdy” just sounds friendlier than “hello” or even “hi.”

• Remove the male factor from malefactor and what’s left?

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs.

The poor have been much in the news over the last few weeks, but not with the season’s usual “away in a manger” patina. National surveys show that most families living below the poverty line own video game consoles. One presidential candidate has suggested that poor children be conscripted by their schools to clean toilets. Eugene’s leaders this week moved to evict Occupy Eugene activists in response to the violence and chaos that often accompanies persistent poverty.

“The poor will be with you always,” so it gets terribly easy to overlook them, especially when we speak about them with generalities and platitudes.

I grew up poor. Seven kids being raised in a simple, three-bedroom home outside Chicago, things got weird after my youngest sister was born. My parents had a fight that crossed the line into violence, and then my father was gone.

After a long absence, he began appearing on occasional weekends, but we were all too young to know what any of it meant. To this day, I don’t know when — or if — a divorce ever was finalized before my father died. All I know is that he stopped providing before I became a teenager.

We made do. I saved every penny for a year from my first paper route to buy a television that included a clock. It could turn off or on automatically. None of my friends who had such a thing. We had other luxuries too. I knew we were poor, but it wasn’t measured by things we didn’t have (except a father.)

I had most of what other kids had, plus two things I believed they didn’t have.

I had a secret. None of my friends knew that my father wasn’t around, or that my family survived on monthly welfare checks. They didn’t know that the canned goods from the church food drives often ended up in my family’s pantry.

I understand now that secrets are common. Shame takes up residence in homes of every class.

My home had one other “extra” — uncertainty. When I was 14, the heat didn’t come on. A neighbor tinkered with our boiler, but the pilot light wouldn’t go on. I went to a friend’s and called the power company. (Our phone had been disconnected for over a year.) The overdue bill hadn’t been paid.

My mother was surprised to hear the news because she didn’t open bills when she had no money to pay them. The stack of envelopes always sat beside the coffee grinder above the sink. She must have stared at the pile whenever she washed dishes.

Children often get assigned adult tasks in chaotic households.

I was put to work in the high school for two weeks every summer to pay for my gym clothes and book fees. Yes, Newt, I cleaned toilets. I also made up elaborate stories to explain why I didn’t have to pay 45 cents for my lunch every day like everyone else.

I’d say that none of this affects me anymore, except then I can’t explain why I remember that school lunches were 45 cents, or that three games of bowling (plus shoe rental) was $1.10, or that the unpaid power bill was $110.43.

I still remember a dime pressed into my palm as I walked to the phone booth in front of Dog ‘n Suds. I would ask Kim Jones to the 7th grade dance. How could a thin circle of metal absorb all the body warmth of a 13-year-old boy? Another case of unexpected heat loss. I put the dime in the slot.

I don’t remember how or whether she answered that call, but I didn’t go to the dance. I learned to rely on notes passed in class or stuffed into lockers — the written word — to convey my thoughts.

It all turned out OK for me, and for most of my brothers and sisters. Even now, we have nothing to compare it to. Normal is what a child knows, even if what a child knows isn’t normal.

Charity made its appearance in our home every year about this time. I learned not to be ungrateful. But to this day, I can’t bear the taste of creamed corn.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs.

Whenever my grandparents returned from a trip, my mother would trundle her seven children for the obligatory visit, where slides were shown and trinkets displayed. I suppose I got the travel bug from those early memories, though I don’t show slides or display trinkets.

Instead, I return with stories about people living their lives and ideas that could be useful back home. When you travel light enough not to require any checked luggage, it’s good to bring home things that don’t take up much room.

I didn’t bring home as many stories from Auckland, New Zealand as I had hoped. I tracked down former Eugene entrepreneur and erstwhile downtown developer Ed Aster, but he didn’t want to talk. Instead, wandering the neighborhoods of Auckland, I picked up an idea that could revive how America once loved its mail.

We know the Post Office has fallen on hard times, because U.S. Representative Peter DeFazio had a media event last week, calling postal leaders slow and stupid. They’re an easy target — I’ve taken pot shots myself — but this remedy focuses intently on the endpoint. Or, to put it more precisely, the hundreds of millions of endpoints reached every day but Sunday.

Mailbox design is not regulated by the government in New Zealand. You’ve probably never bothered to read the United States Postal Service’s mailbox design and engineering guidelines, and I wouldn’t recommend it. Just know that they would more than fill this column space.

Here’s the only part you need: “Customers should discuss the types of approved equipment permitted for their structures with their postmaster before purchasing and installing delivery equipment.” In other words, government will decide what mailbox is right for you.

New Zealand has no such misconceptions. Their government’s attitude is that your mail is your mail. If you want it dropped in a container that’s too small or won’t keep the rain out, you must prefer wrinkled or wet mail. And that’s not their business. They just deliver it. They don’t protect it — or you — from yourself.

As a consequence, everyone’s mailbox is different. Some are sleek cylinders embedded in a concrete wall. Others are tiny replicas of the house behind it, with the roofline opened for mail insertion. I saw one that was a porcelain monster with sharp teeth to protect anything coming near the front door. A “No Solicitors” sign would have been redundant.

Saunter down the street in New Zealand and you get a feel for the people who live there. Does the mail disappear behind a slot in a wall? Is it stored in a whimsical handmade creation? Is the house number handwritten? Does the mailbox need a new coat of paint? Is it similar to others or outrageously unique?

New Zealand’s postal service offers another layer of self-determination that surely endears it to its citizen-customers. Many mark their boxes (or house-replicas, or toothy monsters) with their mail preferences: “No Junk Mail Please” or “Stamped Letters Only” or “No Circulars.”

Each homeowner has the opportunity to mount a form of self-expression on the edge of the public realm. This edge — biologists call it an ecotone — between public and private is where creativity thrives. It’s where the whole of community meets the assembled parts of privacy.

Our creative edge has been scrubbed smooth by government regulation or private-sector efficiencies. Our trash receptacles have become standardized. We’re sold paper shredders so even the trash inside those uniform curbside containers is not distinguishably ours. And curbside recycling is now so well-adopted, you no longer can walk your dog on trash day and know where all the good people live.

In a day and age when people seldom meet their neighbors, wouldn’t you like to know just a little more about the people who might hear you if you screamed in the night? Before we try deregulating mail service, let’s try giving citizens just a little bit of freedom by deregulating mailbox design. I’m sure people will do amazing things.

If you want Americans to care about their mail service, first give them an opportunity to care about their mail.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs.

It was 3:11 a.m. when a friend’s text reached me in a faraway place on the day before Thanksgiving. We’ve all ruminated for weeks now about what happened to now-outgoing University of Oregon president Richard Lariviere, but very little attention has been given to the man himself.

Through the fog of my sleep-interrupted stupor, my first thoughts took me back to May 11, 2010. Lariviere was the scheduled speaker at an event that Tuesday evening. He hadn’t given the planners any idea what his speech would be about, except he gave us its title: “What, Me Worry?”

Over dinner, the table conversation turned to state funding of public education and its uninterrupted decline. One civic leader speculated that the Democrats in control of state government hadn’t been willing to support an institution whose president for the past decade was also a politician himself. Too bad he was aligned with “the wrong party.” Others preferred to mix their dismay with silence.

As dessert arrived, I put the question of the state’s education disinvestment directly to Lariviere: “Doesn’t it sadden you?”

His reply was quick and strong. “Does it make me sad? No. It makes me furious.”

Then he stepped to the podium. He could have spoken about the risks to a state that neglects its flagship public university, or about the fundamental unfairness of the current situation. He could have spoken about his alternative funding model, mixing a private endowment with state bonds to reach a sustainable and predictable future. “The New Partnership” was unveiled the very next day, so it had to be fresh in his mind.

He spoke instead about a couple of Sanskrit words and Hindu concepts: dharma and karma. As if his scholarship needed any underlining, he used a chalkboard. What he taught us that evening must have reached a deep place in me if it popped up so easily at 3:11 a.m.

Circumstances are not what drive history forward; character is. Consequences and precedents can dissuade us from becoming true expressions of our unique and authentic selves, but they are always over and done with before we can act on them. Living in the past is not truly living. Better to look inward and onward, saying “What, me worry?”

I’ve read the Bhagavad Gita before, but always as an exotic text. I understood it better after 30 minutes of tutelage under Richard Lariviere. Whatever your role or identity or contribution to the whole requires, your first responsibility is to do it the very best way you can. You must almost literally pour your self into that responsibility. Dharma requires it.

Circumstances are provided to help us hone our understanding of that greater good and our role within it. But circumstances must not organize our energies or make our choices for us. The coherence that we call progress comes from authenticity and awareness, pursued with abandon.

If all this sounds vaguely familiar, you can thank UO football head coach Chip Kelly. He never misses an opportunity to stress character over circumstances. “Win The Day” requires each of his players to know his role and pour himself into it. Whether it’s a practice or a game, whether the opponent is Portland State or Louisiana State, every moment matters. Every Saturday is the Super Bowl.

I’m sure these two powerful leaders have talked about this life philosophy and how they have been blessed with opportunities to shape young lives with it.

It didn’t surprise me to hear Lariviere say recently, “My employment situation is of very little consequence.” I hate to see this “What, Me Worry?” lesson played out so clearly in the headlines, but I can’t say I’m not also grateful. This Thanksgiving season our community and campus were given a rare gift of unity and resolve.

Those who are close to Lariviere tell me he’s sleeping well at night, confident that he played his role the best way he could, and that the greater good will have been served.

Many of us are saddened. Some are furious. But if we each play our part with authenticity and awareness, change will happen. I learned — and saw — that from Richard.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs.

Only one English-speaking nation has run government surpluses for most of the past two decades: Australia. As the European Union crisis continues its slow-motion implosion, one credit rating agency took an odd turn this week. On the same day that they scolded Europe and warned France of a potential downgrade, they reaffirmed Australia’s AAA bond rating, as if to say to the world, “Why can’t you all be more like them?”

We know that bankers prefer lending money to people who don’t need it. Bankers treat nations no differently.

Australia’s unemployment is half what we’re seeing in the United States. “Too high” would be an on-the-street estimation, but it’s not accompanied with that sense of despair that we’re becoming accustomed to in the West. The liberals in government have run up some deficits the past few years, but austerity has returned as the order of the day.

The government proposed budget cuts that will return surpluses next year, despite the worldwide economic gloom. While Britons take to the streets to protest cuts, Aussies have quietly gone about their business. The cuts will hurt the vulnerable and increase unemployment, but they are accepted nonetheless.

Why? Because Aussies don’t dare lose what they’ve got, and what they’ve got is better than a job. They have confidence.

Every job is necessarily limited. It is what it is. But the hope of a job can be shaped by each imagination, completely filling the space of that person’s need. Full employment was a Soviet ideal. Full aspiration is what Australia offers. Hope is any nation’s most valuable resource.

America had it for a full century. But the world has now turned upside down and Down Under finds itself on top.

Confidence creates its own rewards. Australia’s postal service faces the same daunting trends as we face in the United States, connected people across open spaces. While we contemplate closures, Australia has opened its first 24-hour postal superstore, with 300 more being planned.

In the same way that America outfitted Europe with raw materials and frontier bravado, Australia now supplies China and the Far East’s ascendant consumerism. Aussie farmers have seen profits double in the last three years. The mining industry is doing even better.

As Australia exports its commodities to Asia, Asia is shipping a more valuable commodity back — its children. When Asian families invest in their children, their investment strategies use an unnervingly clear eye. English-first schooling provides a calculable competitive advantage. Australia and New Zealand offers the nearest and most afforable option. Immigration and tourism from Asia is exploding.

The Sydney Opera House attracts more than 8 million visitors each year. Tours are offered every half hour in English, every hour in Chinese. Quantas, Australia’s national airline, has announced it will fast-track plans to launch a super-premium airline catering exclusively to Chinese destinations.

Mix cosmopolitan with confident and you have a cocktail of character that surprises most locals. They’ve built their self-image on being out of the way, forgotten but unbothered. Their children are seeing the world coming to them, not knowing how new it all is.

At a dinner party for a journalist and her family friends, I had a question posed on my behalf. I wanted to know what they considered their native cuisine. The answers revealed a generational split. Those closer to my age acknowledged the deficit, admitting that most of what’s typical isn’t very original. They’ve repurposed cuisines from the United Kingdom, but they have nothing to call their own.

The younger set barely understood my question. Ask a young person today “Where are you from?” and they may tell you where they slept last night. Origins interest them less. So the lack of a distinctive cuisine didn’t crowd their cosmopolitan sense of self. “How do we eat?” came their clarifying question.

One answer gathered consensus: the Asian Food Court. They’re as common here as burgers or pizza back home. Surround a common seating area with Asian food kiosks, add bustle for ambience, and dinner is served. Choose between Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Malaysian, Japanese, and several Chinese regions. Then gather with your friends for a lunch or dinner that typifies a newly interconnected life in the Pacific.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs at www.dksez.com.

AUCKLAND. NEW ZEALAND – Today is Election Day here.

By “here,” I mean New Zealand, and by “today,” I mean tomorrow. New Zealand’s tomorrow happens three hours earlier than Oregon’s today. Since they are 21 hours ahead of Pacific Standard Time, I should know who wins tomorrow’s Civil War football game by lunchtime today, but they swear everyone to secrecy when going through Customs.

As elections go, this is a big one for the Kiwi. Not only are they voting for a new parliamentary government, there’s also a referendum on what sort of voting system New Zealanders’ prefer. The complexity of the choices ahead have given wags and pundits plenty to talk about for the entire campaign, which has dragged on for several weeks now.

Election placards are everywhere, but unlike American lawn signs, they are intuitively mounted at eye level. (Anyone busy looking at their shoelaces might cast a vote you wouldn’t care to have. Maybe there’s a lesson there to be learned.)

The Parliament system makes no assumption about how campaigns and governance will be linked. Rather, it assumes (or hopes) that no one party will gain absolute power, requiring unending speculations about what they might give up to gain said absolute power, and who might wring those concessions from them.

This allows for unending permutations and improvisations, beginning with 22 parties on the ballot asking for your vote. Those with enough money to buy TV ads but not enough popularity to become a governing force — and there are quite a few — introduce themselves as “governing partners” you can rely upon. How refreshing to hear that governing requires partnerships. Anyone on their first marriage would do well to learn the lesson.

If the set wasn’t already set in (literal) stone, electoral systems like theirs here might qualify as one of the Wonders of the World. The ballot handed to each New Zealander this Saturday is a ballot and a referendum, each separated into two parts.

The ballot asks for a favorite candidate, and then a favored political party. The Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) system gives weight to both choices, but no American is likely to want to understand the complexity.

The referendum asks voters to weigh in on the voting system itself. Do they prefer the current MMP system, or would they prefer an alternative. If they’d rather ditch MMP, which of four alternatives do they prefer: FPP, PV, STV, or SM? The initialisms make the complexity only slightly more palatable.

New Zealand has used a Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) voting system since 1996, but Germany has been using it for half a century. Each voter casts two votes: one for a candidate and another for a party. Today’s ballot has 22 parties listed. Candidates are chosen in a simple, “winner-take-all” vote. They call it “First Past the Post” (FPP).

Winning candidates fill the first 70 of Parliament’s 120 seats. The rest are assigned from the published party lists, according to the proportion of votes each party receives nationwide. If a party places more candidates than their party’s nationwide vote proportion warrants, they simply add more seats to Parliament with what they call an “overhang.”

Parties rarely receive an absolute majority of Parliament seats, so coalitions of parties can almost always be expected, adding intrigue for weeks before the election, and hard news for days afterward. Although there are only two questions before voters today, the daily newspaper’s Voter Guide earlier this week ran 28 pages, without advertising.

Choosing your preferred candidate and party is the easy part. Then comes the referendum, which also has two parts. The first is Yes or No: “Shall we keep the MMP voting system?” The second part asks, if MMP is rejected by the majority of voters, which of four alternatives would you choose? FPP, PV, STV, or SM?

First Past the Post (FPP) makes every seat in Parliament winner-take-all. Those who believe power is best consolidated prefer this option, because inter-party coalitions would seldom be required to govern. Since New Zealand votes every three years, this option promises more stability, although it’s the system voters rejected in favor of MMP in 1993, and there has been no discernible difference in stability between the two systems.

Preferential Voting (PV) also bypasses the party list system. Parliament members would be chosen directly by constituents, but voters would rank their preference of candidates. The candidate garnering the least votes would be eliminated and their voters’ second choice s would be added to the totals. The process would continue until a candidate gathered a majority of votes.

Single Transferable Vote (STV) divides the country into larger electorates, with each being represented by at least three and as many as seven Parliament seats. (Think of a combination of our own House and Senate, with a dash of the Electoral College.) Voters use a Preference Voting ballot, but voters must receive, and I quote, “a fixed quota of votes which is determined by a mathematical formula.” (emphasis added) A candidate receiving more than 50 percent of the vote transfers his or her surplus votes, using the Preference Voting procedure

Supplementary Member (SM) is similar to the current system, except that the party vote is discrete from the candidate vote. MMP fills the proportional membership first with elected candidates, and then the party list if necessary. SM would fill 90 seats with candidates, and the remaining 30 would mirror the nationwide proportions of the parties.

Political debates in New Zealand typically include a studio audience, but instead of whooping for death of comatose invalids or booing gay soldiers, they are given dials so they can silently register their approval or disapproval of what they are hearing in real time. New Zealanders call this the “worm” and you can watch it on the bottom of the screen. Political pollsters in America use this device religiously, but I’ve never seen it broadcast to the public.

I watched the last of four debates between the two major candidates for Prime Minister this week, and it was both familiar and fantastic. One side was claiming budget cuts for the wealthy produce economic growth, while the other was claiming that $13.00 ($9.70 USD) national minimum wage should be lifted to $15.00 ($11.20 USD). Meanwhile, both sides claimed credit for the “Lord of the Rings” movie series success.

Then consider how the ballot and the referendum interact. Prime Minister John Key is popular with about three quarters of voters, but his National Party, polling at 48 percent, could enact more of its policies if MMP was replaced by FPP or (probably) PV, but neither of those are the most popular alternative with MMP’s dissenters. Should the dominant party risk a change? Or should they rely on an independent review of the MMP system, which will present proposed changes to Parliament only if MMP is endorsed by voters?

So a “Yes” isn’t quite a yes and “No” is followed by “What Then?” Understanding each choice requires high school math skills you were sure you’d never need. “Donkey votes” are an ongoing concern — people voting mindlessly, not knowing what they’re doing.

Will the complexity of choices cause apathy among voters? Prognosticators fear that only three quarters of eligible voters may bother to vote. New Zealand’s turnout typically hovers at 90 percent. But don’t blame the complexity. Instead, blame, in one writer’s words, “designer politics,” which he describes as “scrappy, insubstantial, trivial, and unnecessarily conflictual.”

New Zealand may be ahead of us on the calendar, but we’re way ahead of them in “designer politics.”

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard.

As the world turns, it also shifts. The spin is more of a wobble. Mark Twain explained it this way: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” The latest shift has placed the Pacific Northwest nearer the center of the world. After generations of obscurity here on the “upper left edge,” this is going to take a little getting used to.

Who could have anticipated that Oregon would fit the world’s new definition of “centrally located?”

As the center of the world’s consumer gravity shifts to China, with a billion people reaching for their middle class dreams and two billion more waiting for their turn, what we used to call the Far East is linking up with what we used to call the Old West. Meanwhile, NAFTA has tripled the north-south corridor of free trade beside the Pacific Ocean. Plot both of these shifts on a globe and Oregon starts to look like the new center.

So it makes sense that each Oregon governor makes an annual foray to Asia to promote trade with our state. Portland’s mayor just returned from a 10-day diplomacy trip to Asia. Mayors haven’t typically worried about global economic opportunities, but that was then. Now is just beginning.

The shift has happened slowly, but look back a quarter century and it’s clear to see.

Oregon commissioned an economic development study. After the local depression of the early 1980s, we did a lot of studying. Extraction and harvesting of natural resources was beginning to look “over.” The study recommended that Oregon shift its economic incentives toward manufacturing, since that sort of industry offered good wages and relative stability. The report followed up with an intriguing question: what should we be manufacturing?

The report offered a myriad of answers, but among them was one little nugget that now borders on the profound. Oregon should set its sights on building stuff that doesn’t weigh much. Oregon is tucked into the least populated corner of the nation. The largest California market is 850 miles away. Transportation costs increase with each ounce, and with it the temptation to relocate a successful manufacturing business to be closer to its customers.

That study became a revelation. It has guided planning and policy for a generation.

Few noticed that Oregon’s only Fortune 500 company manufactures something that weighs literally nothing. Nike admitted as much when it declared it is not technically a manufacturer. Nike doesn’t manufacture shoes. Nike manufactures demand for the shoes they pay others in Asia to make.

Phil Knight brilliantly perceived that manufacturing in the East and selling in the West tilted the economic formula profoundly in his favor. Software development also is weightless, so Bill Gates could pick the quietest corner of the country to become the nation’s richest man. Lorry Lokey’s benevolence to the University of Oregon was inspired by research and commercial opportunities we expect from nanotechnology. Designing solutions atom by atom isn’t exactly weightless, but as close as you can get to it.

“Light” was the new might.

The curve that brought us inexpensive consumer items from Asia is about to become a boomerang. Prosperity in China and other Asian countries has begun creating demand that flows in the opposite direction. They see what America has and they want it. Ships heading west across the Pacific are no longer traveling empty.

China is on pace this year to spend $1 billion on Oregon and Washington lumber, shipped from Astoria to be milled in China for a housing boom that could last decades. This dramatic surge of demand is driving the price of raw materials up. Extraction and harvesting being “over” appears to be over.

Our challenge today is to manage our natural resources sustainably, while continuing to build on the new industries we have fostered over the past two decades. If we can ship high-end technology east (and north and someday, south) over land and raw materials west over sea, we’re bound to reap unique benefits from being at the crossroads of the two.

Freighters out of Astoria and soon from Newport will bring us new-old economic opportunities. The Old West is becoming new again.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs. He’s traveling this week to Japan to see the wobbly world for himself.

I was wrong.

Four years ago, the blight that had been downtown Eugene began to attract interest from developers. Some insisted that nothing be done, because everything was really just fine. A tango center and our “bar-muda triangle” provided enough downtown activity.

Others, including me, supported an ambitious project by Portland-based KWG Partnership, an offshoot of Opus Northwest. Tom Kemper and his partners promised a “lifestyle center” with some large national retailers and a movie theater. A middle choice emerged — renovate the Centre Court Building and hope momentum brings other projects forward.

The city of Eugene helped Beam Development purchase the Centre Court Building and crews started restoring it to a grandeur that peaked more than half a century ago. It progressed slowly, but it has proved to be the right choice.

Since then, Lane Community College has begun to realize its most ambitious vision for a downtown campus, filling the Sears pit and then some. Rob Bennett is building offices on Willamette Street, filling downtown’s other notorious pit. Steve Master plans to build loft apartments above what once was a Taco Time.

Bit by bit, the pieces are falling into place. Slow and steady carried the day.

I called Beam CEO Brad Malsin to admit that I was wrong. He chuckled, “Well, you weren’t 100 percent wrong. We were always going to renovate the Centre Court Building, even if the Opus Northwest people had gotten their project approved.”

The tortoise mused on the fate of the hare, as Malsin continued. “Our integers are smaller. But we’re always focused on the long-term. We don’t develop lifestyle centers. We’re in the business of community development. That’s the heart and soul of what we do.”

He paused for a moment, as if allowing history to catch up to his vision. “Americans are waking up, realizing that they’ve been looking to large corporations. But that’s not where they’ll find what they really want: authenticity, ownership, dedication. I’ll be 60 years old in January. I’m not piling up money. I want to leave a legacy. I want my kids to know what I stand for.”

Last weekend, two dozen architects and their support staff settled into the third floor of Centre Court, renamed the Broadway Commerce Center. Like hamsters rearranging their shavings, a small army of “young creatives” are nestling into downtown’s new centerpiece.

Scott Clarke, an associate at PIVOT Architecture, managed the project on behalf of his bosses and cohorts. The space has been designed to optimize the work they do, while also exhibiting the firm’s values. Work stations are open, naturally lit, collaborative. Edges are clearly defined but supple.

The place where they are is not hidden, but highlighted. Clarke pulled his iPhone to show me pictures. Saturday night’s jack-o-lantern festivities illuminated the public square below. Clarke marveled at the glow of candlelight and crowds: “It could have been Paris!”

Well, that might be a bit of an overstatement, but you have to love the enthusiasm. Somehow, I don’t think a downtown outlet for Linens ‘n Things would have evoked that sort of sparkle.

Beam is busy trying to fill the rest of the building now. The work is far from done, but momentum is undeniable. And we didn’t have to scrape another block of downtown to make it happen. Sometimes I’m glad to be wrong.

Beam does most of its work in Portland, but Malsin loves Eugene: “I’ve heard people say that Eugene is more Portland than Portland. I agree.”

The Portland Development Commission this week gave Beam a project Malsin’s wanted for six years. Burnside Bridgehead will incorporate the area’s gritty past and provide an “attainable” live-work environment for young creatives who are just starting out.

Attainable is the new sustainable.

Economic development has shifted its focus from attracting merchants to cultivating employers and entrepreneurs. If Beam’s project brings jobs, PDC loans may be forgiven.

PDC is making up for lost time on the Burnside Bridgehead project. In 2005, they passed over Beam’s plan for a live-work business incubator in favor of a “lifestyle center” to be built by Opus Northwest. Opus Northwest’s fortunes stalled when the recession hit in 2008. Last year they went out of business.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs. He’s also the executive director for the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

Americans are not ignorant. They’re stupid.

Ignorance comes from lack of information. Stupidity results from an inability or refusal to process information. Our democracy relies on an informed citizenry, so we have instituted free speech, public schools, open meetings, public airwaves, disclosure requirements — all designed to get information to the public. Our system’s framers contemplated no strategies for an electorate that becomes stupefied.

We try to keep up, but we’re overwhelmed by the flood of information that deluges us daily. We pine for simplicity. And we harbor unspoken fears that others may also be falling behind, but that we’re falling behind faster.

We try to adapt. We filter information aggressively. We seek voices we find agreeable. We repeat lines and arguments that others made memorable or convincing. We latch onto ideas that make us feel/appear adequate. We share those ideas, hopeful that others are likewise listening only to agreeable voices.

America has been narrowing its collective attention for a full generation.

Thirty-one years ago today, our national consciousness took a significant turn that has tangible consequences today. But because we didn’t notice when it happened and we haven’t marked the date, its importance continues and grows. It was on this day that the Too Much Information Age began.

The shift began a year earlier, when 52 Americans were held hostage in the Iranian Embassy. Americans responded by wanting to know everything there was to know about these 52 Americans. Media companies responded, and the floodgates were opened. The New York Times ran pages of personal profiles every day for months. ABC-TV launched what became “Nightline,” extending nightly newscasts for another 30 minutes.

But all the extra information did not calm people’s spirits. If anything, keeping up with the information being offered produced an inner sense of peril that matched the horrors we were watching out of Tehran. For the first time in two generations, America was afraid.

Then came October 28, 1980.

Just a week before the general election, President Jimmy Carter agreed to his only debate with Republican challenger Ronald Reagan. The trajectories of their parties and the ideologies they represented were set for the next generation — all flowing from quips uttered that evening.

Reagan had been asked how he intended to increase military spending while also reducing taxes. Reagan replied with a short explanation of supply-side economics, which later came to be known as “Reaganomics.” Carter’s retort was rehearsed: “H. L. Mencken said that for every problem there’s a simple answer. It would be neat and plausible and wrong.”

Carter misattributed the quote, which originated with George Bernard Shaw, but never mind that. Liberals for three decades now have avoided simple answers.

Reagan’s seminal quote is shorter and probably less rehearsed — but also more memorable. “There you go again,” was his response after Carter pushed for a national health insurance program. His derision of the complexity of Carter’s proposal bookended Carter’s insistence that answers cannot be simple.

Conservatives have since favored candidates and policies that can be explained to everyday people. When experts warn that a simple answer won’t work, Republicans summon Reagan’s “there you go again” smirk, marginalizing the intelligentsia.

Journalists have internalized this double standard, expecting simple but passionate positions from the ideological right, and high-minded arguments with mind-numbing details from the left.

Occupy Wall Street is belittled in the press because their demands are not clearly listed, as if “economic justice” doesn’t suffice. Yet the Tea Party’s beginnings were no more articulate, storming town hall meeting with vague or uninformed complaints about government intrusions.

When a character comes on the scene that doesn’t fit the narrative, media resists, reinforcing the paradigm. Only occasionally does an exception slip through.

“Yes We Can!” took hold in 2008. Barack Obama was new. He was young. He was black. He took Howard Dean’s populist howl and added syncopation. But Obama’s not new anymore. Slowly, our president’s image has been transformed from an electrifying organizer into a professorial scold.

Simple ideas are now favored, even if they aren’t good ideas. We erected a wall against complexity and then forgot the wall was built by us. And not very long ago.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs.